In this newsletter you will find the following: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1- The new commission and general objectives 2012-2016 2- Colloquium in Dortmund August 2012 - Publication of many presentations of Dortmund/Bochum in our working papers - Pictures of the meeting 3- Our Commission at the IGC Cologne 2012 4- Young Scholars Prize 2012 5- 2013 Meetings: Johannesburg/Cape Town/Stellenbosch, and our presence in the regional IGU Conference in Kyoto 6- Special sessions of our Commission 7- Future meetings 2014-2016 8- Book projects ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2- Colloquium in Dortmund August 2012

The colloquium was a great success. In total there were 58 delegates representing 22 nationalities. There were 11 paper sessions, 1 young scholars workshop, 2 business meetings, and 3 very interesting field trips/scientific excursions on the Industrial Urban Heritage of Dortmund and the wider Ruhr region.

Thanks again to the organizers: Ludger Basten and Lienhart Lötcher for their wonderful organization and their constant willingness to help everybody during this most memorable meeting.

3- Our commission in the IGC Cologne 2012

In total the urban Commission was involved in 7 sessions: - 4 ordinary sessions, - 2 co-organized sessions with the Commission on Transport Geography, - 1 special session on Urbanization in China, which has been organized by Werner Breitung with the Chinese geographers (represented especially by the Chinese Urban Commission and its President, Gu Chaolin). - The number of papers, presentations and the wide range of material covered across all the sessions all indicate a very successful IGC for the Urban Commission. There were some very well attended sessions with large audiences and packed lecture halls. A number of the papers presented will find their way into a number of special journal editions that are being planned.

6- Special sessions of our Commission

In order to make our commission more visible in the international scientific arena, we encourage organizing special sessions in big colloquiums. The commission support is in its capacity to mobilize a scientific committee of the session.

A session will be organized in AAG 2013 in Los Angeles: Complex Urban Systems: http://www.unil.ch/igu-urban/page93664.html Interested participants should : 1- send an abstract of max 250 words to celine.rozenblat@unil.ch as soon as possible. We will respond very quickly to applications to include papers in the session: the committee is composed of 3 members of the IGU Urban commission 2012-2016; 2- register first for the conference and then submit your abstract in the regular way (through the AAG website: http://www.aag.org/cs/annualmeeting/register); 3- Finally send the registration code (PIN) they receive to the Session organizer, celine.rozenblat@unil.ch, no later than 22th October 2012. Please note that the PIN is activated only after Authors have paid the conference fee AND have submitted the abstract. We will then mention all registration codes that will be in our session.

7- Future meetings 2014-2016

Regional IGU Conference will be held each year until 2016 (and revert to alternate years thereafter):

- 2014: Krakow Regional IGU - 2014: meeting proposed to the Urban commission: Poznan - 2015: Moscow Regional IGU - 2015: suggestions for meetings of the Urban Commission: Beirut, Lausanne, Saudi Arabia, or Calgary/Southern Alberta - 2016: Beijing IGU Congress In preparation for the Beijing meeting, Werner Breitung has been appointed as our Commission observer. There will be a new committee of the Chinese Urban Geography Commission, after elections next summer and Werner will work closely with that new committee to arrange our Commission meeting in Beijing in 2016.

8- Book projects

- An edited and refereed volume of papers from the Canterbury meeting - Special issue from the Dortmund meeting - Urban systems now (P. Petsimeris, C. Rozenblat) - Book on different types of cities (Wayne Davies). - Epistemology of the former members of the commission (Petros Petsimeris). - Book on the geography of crime (Andre Horn).